Mayoral candidate Olivia Chow says she would encourage developers to build affordable apartments by giving them a break on development charges and making it easier for them to do more building on existing tower sites.

Chow released the proposals Friday as part of a modest package of policies intended to help combat Toronto’s affordable housing crisis. The wait list for social housing stood at 169,553 people in May, and the average rent in the city for a two-bedroom unit was $2,312 in the first quarter of 2014.

“People cannot find good rental housing because there’s not enough rental housing being built,” Chow said near city hall.

Chow said she would set a target of having affordable units compose 20 per cent of all new units in residential towers. She pledged to “create 15,000 new affordable rental units” over four years.

That would be a major increase over the 3,160 affordable units the city says will have opened with government support between 2011 and the end of 2014. Chow, though, stopped well short of the ambitious “inclusionary zoning” schemes of other North American cities, some of which require developers to include affordable apartments in their towers.

Vancouver has required developers to set aside 20 per cent of major projects for affordable housing. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has tabled a broad multibillion-dollar plan that controversially includes a legal mandate.

Chow said she would seek to defer development charges on affordable units for at least 10 years, longer if the units remain affordable. She did not say how much revenue she believes the city would be giving up; as of August, developers will pay the city $11,900 for each one-bedroom unit.

The city already waives the charges in cases where rents are kept below the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. average price for 20 years. Chow’s proposal would provide incentives in a larger number of cases.

Builders of rental housing, who make their money over time rather than all at once like condo developers, have urged the city to allow them to allow them to pay their charges over a number of years rather than upfront.

Medallion Developments executive Howie Paskowitz, who attended Chow’s announcement, said he believes a deferral “helps quite a bit.” He added that it must be part of a “toolbox” of affordable housing incentives.

“If you don’t find ways to encourage it with time and money, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Paskowitz said.

Chow suggested she would also use Section 37 of the Planning Act to allow developers to construct bigger buildings if they include affordable units. And she said she would she would work to “fast-track” new development on properties where there is already an apartment tower but also vacant space.

That move was recommended by the city’s Private Sector Housing Roundtable in 2012. Chow and developers say the revenue from the extra development would allow for creating new affordable units and improving existing buildings.

“Right now, in order to get anything rezoned or build anything, it takes two-years-plus for a development to get through city hall,” she said.

“And developers want to build rental housing, developers want to build affordable housing, but they are waiting for years for the approval process to get through. So both fast-tracking the approval process and giving financial incentives will encourage a lot more building of rental housing and affordable units.”

Chow said she would run a pilot project to allow seniors buildings owned by Toronto Community Housing, the city-owned landlord, to be run by a separate “stakeholder-governed” entity rather than the TCHC itself.

She did not offer up a formal policy to address the TCHC’s repairs crisis. She said she would urge the federal and provincial government to provide more funding — as the city is already doing without success — and seek to redevelop more tower neighbourhoods in the style of Regent Park, though that mixed-income model can only work in some parts of the city.

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